Events

Thursday, August 29 2013

Before and during the Civil War, Confederate guerrillas – men like William Clarke Quantrill, “Bloody Bill” Anderson, and Frank and Jesse James – battled federal troops and Jayhawker irregulars along the Missouri-Kansas border.

That brutal era comes to life in Guerrillas in Our Midst, an original exhibit of drawings and photographs from the Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections. It covers not only the war but also its aftermath, when former bushwhackers like the James brothers turned to outlawry.

Begun in 1942 to address labor needs in agriculture and the railroads, the U.S. government’s bracero program became the largest guest worker program in U.S. history, with hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers providing manpower from World War II through 1964.

Bittersweet Harvest, a new bilingual exhibition organized by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, examines the experiences of Bracero workers and their families, providing rich insight into Mexican-American life and historical background to today’s debates on immigration and guest worker programs.

Glen Hansen specializes in art inspired by the architecture of cities like Paris, Prague, and Venice. Now he turns his pencils and brushes on Kansas City for a show featuring over 30 drawings and a half-dozen paintings of local buildings and their architectural and decorative details.

Hixon transformed the field of portrait photography in Kansas City and the surrounding region during a career that spanned more than seven decades. His studios—the first in the Brady Building at 11th and Main Streets, and the second just one block west in the Baltimore Hotel—welcomed thousands of patrons throughout the 1910s and 1920s.

When police in Ohio raided Dollree Mapp’s home looking for evidence in a bombing, all they found were some “lascivious books.” Mapp appealed her pornography conviction, leading the Supreme Court under Earl Warren to address not only the search-and-seizure question but also the “exclusionary rule” concerning the use of evidence not specified in a search warrant.

Carolyn N. Long is associate professor of political science at Washington State University – Vancouver.

Programs and a traveling exhibit from the Metropolitan Community College’s Business and Technology Campus explore how to land in-demand “gold collar” jobs – electric utility lineman, computer-controlled machine programmer, welder/fabricator, environmental engineering technician – with just an associate’s degree or less.

The programs – 10 Gold Collar Jobs in KC and 10 Things that Get You Hired and 10 Things that Get You Fired – will be presented throughout the summer and fall at several Library locations.